


rise til we fall

by memorysdaughter



Series: all these walls are shaking [1]
Category: Blindspot (TV)
Genre: Autism, Autistic Patterson, Developing Friendships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, not Borden friendly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 10:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16015610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/memorysdaughter/pseuds/memorysdaughter
Summary: Patterson's different, but so are all the people she's meeting.





	rise til we fall

**Author's Note:**

> I head-canon Patterson as autistic, and I used that head-canon as the basis for this fic, though in this version she's a bit different from actual canon Patterson. If it's not for you, that's okay.
> 
> Title from "Rise" by Jonas Blue ft. Jack & Jack (although my favorite version is by Walk off the Earth and Gabriela Bee).

**_Prelude_ **

She has many books, all in a box in the back of her closet.  It’s stupid. She doesn’t need those books anymore, she mastered everything in them, and yet she can’t bring herself to throw them away.  Someone, somewhere, miles and years and thousands of thoughts away, made those books for her. If she keeps them, she’s keeping her promise to them, to learn as much as she can and prove that she’s able to be better than they ever thought she could.

One of the books is about work.  About work clothes, and interacting with coworkers, and things to say.  She studies that one before her first meeting with Assistant Director Mayfair.  She’s purchased several blouses and some neutral-colored pants and a handful of cardigans and two pairs of sturdy, dependable shoes.  Putting them together in the morning is like a puzzle. Shirt A goes with Pants 1 and 2 but not Pants 3. Shirt A and Cardigan Alpha don’t go together, either.  Work clothes are confusing.

Having a job isn’t confusing.  Doing work isn’t confusing. It’s everything else she’s going to have trouble with.

Maybe there will be questions.   _Why do you…_ or _What’s that…_

Or maybe just pointed statements.   _That isn’t normal_ or _Stop being so weird_ or _No one cares about that_ or just, simply, _Shut up._

She clenches her hands into fists and recites the periodic table until the panic squeezed around her chest lets go just a little bit.

She lays out her clothes.

She packs her lunch.

She brushes her teeth.

She reads the book about work one more time.  Then she gets out the one about faces and traces them with her finger.   _Happy.  Sad. Angry.  Confused. Scared._

There are no longer faces for all of the things she’s feeling.  At least, not in this book. Or in any of the ones in her closet.

And that makes her feel like what the scared face represents.

 

 

Assistant Director Mayfair smells like sandalwood.  Her office has two doors and they are glass and she likes that.  She likes being able to see through them. She doesn’t like being closed in.

There’s a man in Assistant Director Mayfair’s office.  He looks like he dresses the same way the book about work taught her, except he looks much more comfortable in his clothes than she feels.  His sweater is blue. She likes blue.

“Agent Patterson, this is Dr. Borden.  He’s a consulting psychiatrist with the FBI,” Assistant Director Mayfair says. “I asked him to be here on your first day of work.  He wanted to meet you.”

“Hello, Agent Patterson.  I’m Robert.”

He wants to shake her hand.  She’s still trying to make sense of his job title. “I don’t need a psychiatrist.  I’m not crazy.”

Dr. Borden smiles. “I’m not here to provide psychiatric services.  Think of me as a friend.”

She bites her lip. “You are a coworker.”

“Can’t I also be a friend?”

She wants to say _not today_ but she thinks that might be rude.  Helplessly she looks at Assistant Director Mayfair.

“Your Ph.D. supervisor mentioned you do better when you have someone to assist you with transition periods,” Assistant Director Mayfair says. “I thought Dr. Borden might be a neutral party, since he won’t be working on the majority of our active cases.  He can be a sounding board, someone to check in with, or he can be just furniture in the background. It’s up to you.”

She freezes. “I would like to see my lab now, please.”

 

 

They show her the lab.  There are lots of windows.  She likes that. All of the machines are shiny and smooth and their hums are like a welcoming chorus.  She likes that, too. She likes the lab so much that she wants to be left alone in it.

Then she turns around and sees Assistant Director Mayfair and Dr. Borden standing there watching her.  They’re both smiling like she’s their daughter on her first day of school. She is too blond to be their daughter, but their facial expressions seem to say _proud_.

She knows what that means.  They’re _proud_ of her because she’s _different._  She’s _special_.  People like her have _difficulty_ in the workplace.  But not her. She’s one of the good ones.  She fits in. She’s _almost_ normal.

“You’ll be working with a few different teams in the office,” Assistant Director Mayfair says when she just continues to stare at the two of them. “Most of them are in the process of finishing cases or don’t need forensic support at this time, but one team just received a case this morning and they’ll be bringing evidence back with them from the scene.  Can I bring you up to speed?”

It’s the most welcome thing anyone’s said since she arrived at work.

 

 

She doesn’t break down at work.  Not on the first day. Not on the second.  Not for the first four years she’s there.

She spends a lot of time at night worrying about everything she did during the day.  Were her hand gestures too big or too small or just wrong? Did that coworker misunderstand what she meant?  Did they think it was strange that she reacted that way? Should she have focused more on something and less on something else?

She never worries about work.  Calculations and formulas and operations, numbers and science and cyberspace – those things all make sense.  It’s everything else that unsettles her.

As far as she can tell, only Assistant Director Mayfair and Dr. Borden know that she’s _different._

Sometimes it feels very lonely.

Sometimes she feels very lonely.

She doesn’t remember what face represents that, and anyway she’s spending too much time at night lying awake staring at her ceiling, micromanaging her social interactions, to get that particular book out of her closet.

If there’s anything she’s learned, it’s that other people are very good at ignoring the faces in front of them when they want to.

 

* * *

 

**I.**

There’s evidence from a big case flooding in.  A serial killer, somebody going around in doctor’s scrubs chopping people up.  The FBI was called in after the perpetrator crossed state lines. _Several_ state lines.  Boxes and boxes of evidence are piled up all over her lab.

She doesn’t like it.  She knows they need to be there.  She needs to analyze their contents, make sense of the answers, help her team solve the case.  But there’s no system to it. She barely gets time to scribble things down on a rubric before more boxes come in.  Her two regular assistants are out for the day, so she’s trying to keep track of all the boxes and give the substitute assistants directions.

It’s too much.

She knows it’s too much.

“Not over there!” she yells at one of them. “Those are the Missouri boxes!”

The assistant freezes. “This one is from Missouri.”

“No, it says _NE_ – that stands for Nebraska.  It does not go there, it goes with the Nebraska boxes!”

The assistant turns, muttering something under his breath.

“I’ve got the boxes from the most recent case.  Do you want those samples run through the mass spectrometer?” the other assistant asks.

“Hey, so, there’s no Nebraska pile.  Do you want me to _make_ a Nebraska pile?”

“I mean, I know they told us the most recent case is the priority but there’s like four hundred different samples and I just want to make sure we’re doing the right ones.”

“Maybe that’s an M.  Maybe it says ME, like, you know, Maine.  Do we have Maine cases?”

She drops her clipboard and pen to the table and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes.  The elements of the periodic table rise up in her mouth like bile and she swallows hard.

“Ma’am?” she hears one of the assistants ask.

She wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to call her _ma’am_ but her mouth won’t work.  Or rather, she’s fairly sure it would work, but she would only be able to get out elements or star names from constellations light years away.  She starts to rock back and forth in place, hands still pushed against her eyes, and a low moaning noise trickles past her vocal cords.

She knows this is how it’s going to end and she can’t make it stop.  She’s going to be fired. All because she can’t get her shit together.

It makes the moaning louder.

“Dude, go _get_ somebody,” one of the assistants hisses to the other.

“Like who?  A shrink?”

“Like, anybody!  Look at her! This is definitely above our pay grade!”

She hears footsteps, then the door opening and closing.

She brings her hands down from her face but keeps her eyes squeezed shut.  Her fingers clench, nails digging into her palms, and without her permission her fists beat against her thighs.

She wants to feel something.

She wants to know what the face for this emotion is supposed to look like.

She’d settle for knowing what this emotion is called.

“Patterson?” a calm voice asks. “Patterson, it’s Zapata.”

She knows Zapata.  She likes Zapata. She definitely does _not_ want Zapata to see her like this.

“Um, one of your lab rats mentioned you were having some… difficulty.  I couldn’t find Mayfair or Borden, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I’ll just… be here.  If you need me.”

Her thighs are starting to hurt.  Her hands hurt. She can’t focus. Her chest burns and she realizes she hasn’t taken a breath in some time.  She feels tears running down her cheeks. She rocks and pounds and moans and wishes, _wishes_ she wasn’t like this.

“You like stars,” she hears Zapata say, somewhere beyond her body. “Tell me the brightest stars.”

Her brain somehow complies, and the moan turns into hesitant words. “The sun.  Sirius. Canopus. Alpha Centauri. Arcturus. Vega. Capella. Rigel…”

“Tell me again.”

“The sun.  Sirius. Canopus.  Alpha Centauri. Arcturus.  Vega. Capella. Rigel.”

“One more time.”

“The sun.  Sirius. Canopus.  Alpha Centauri. Arcturus.  Vega. Capella. Rigel.”

“Good job.  Bring your head up - stop pinching off your airway.”

There’s something gentle but firm about Zapata’s instructions, and she finds herself following through, her head raising from its previous position near her chest.  It’s almost immediately easier to breathe, and she finds she’s panting with relief. The names of the stars are still tripping from her lips in little whispers: _“The sun.  Sirius. Canopus.  Alpha Centauri…”_

“Can you un-clench your hands?” Zapata murmurs.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts out.

“Shh, no, it’s okay,” Zapata says. “Un-clench your hands.  Keep telling me stars.”

“Arcturus.  Vega. Capella.  Rigel.” Her eyes close and her hands relax.  She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “The sun.  Sirius. Canopus. Alpha Centauri.”

“Good job.”

The rest of the tension leaches out of her body and she stumbles forward, her legs going weak as soon as they’re no longer held taut by anxiety.

“I got you,” she hears Zapata say, and strong arms grab her, lowering her gently to the floor.

She slumps back against the wall, unable to even keep her body upright.  She wants to thank Zapata, but she can’t find the words.

As it turns out, she doesn’t need to.  As her eyes droop closed, she feels Zapata’s arm wrap around her, and she leans into her coworker.

Her _friend._

The names of the stars bleed out of her mind and instead she sees that book, the book in her closet, the one with the faces and the names of feelings.  The faces are blurry, but she doesn’t need them - she’s mentally flipping through the names of the feelings.

_Calm_ , she realizes, and she lets Zapata’s warm body lull her to sleep.

 

* * *

 

**II.**

“Patterson.  Keep your eyes open.” The voice is sharp, and there’s a hand on her cheek, tapping briskly. “Patterson?  Can you hear me?”

She can’t figure out what’s happening.  She woke up early this morning with a sick feeling in her stomach and some sort of buzzing in her head, but she went to work anyway.  She always wants to be at work. She feels good at work, because she’s helping, because she’s doing a good job, because everything makes sense at work.  Everything has a place, and so does everyone, and she fits in there, because they’ve made a space for her.

The sick feeling didn’t go away, though, and the buzzing got louder, and she threw up in her garbage can at 9:17 am.  Then the floor was next to her face, and she was trying to say that she felt the way the face next to the word _sick_ made her feel, and she was crying and then she threw up on the floor at 9:22 am.  Her eyes got blurry and the lab got dark and she kept trying to say words but they weren’t coming out.

“Patterson.” The voice sounds mad.  Are they mad at her?

She’s moving, being carried maybe, because it’s fast movement and she doesn’t move that fast.  She wants to say something, tell whoever this is that she doesn’t like to be carried. Or touched.  The hand is still tapping on her cheek.

“Patterson, you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

_Reade._  It’s Reade’s voice.

“Patterson, come on.  Open your eyes.”

There’s another voice, a man’s voice.  Saying numbers. A flash of something like pain in her arm.  That finally registers and she jerks back into consciousness.  Her vision’s still cloudy but she sees an EMT on her left and Reade on her right.  Without her permission her right hand curls into a fist and she aims a punch squarely towards the EMT.

Reade leans forward and grabs her arm.  She jerks her head back towards him and howls.

“Hey, hey, you’re gonna get us kicked out of this ambulance,” Reade tells her.  His voice is shaky but he has a smile on his face. She doesn’t know what that means. “I’m so sorry.  I know… your paperwork… it says you don’t like doctors. But you’re… you passed out.”

She wrestles against him, trying to get her arm free.  She can’t be here. It’s too small. It’s moving. They’re going to touch her.  They’re going to talk to her. They’re going to ask her questions. She shrieks at Reade again, somehow trying to communicate all of that wordlessly.

“I’m gonna have to sedate her, or we’re gonna call the cops when we get to the hospital,” the EMT says.

She whips her head back towards him and her left arm reaches up and grabs his shirt.

“Patterson!” Reade snaps.

Her brain gets fuzzy and something in her throat chokes and she knows the faces for these emotions would have words under them like _rage_ and _sick_ and _uncomfortable_ and _wrong._  And she wants to stop being wrong.  She lets out a whimper. Her head’s buzzing again.

“I’m sorry,” Reade says, a little more gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

To the EMT, he says, “She’s autistic.  Can you be a little more understanding?”

She hears Reade say that word - _autistic_ \- which she knows is a word about her, but he doesn’t sound angry about it.  He isn’t saying it to make fun of her, either. He’s… he’s trying to advocate for her.  He’s on her side. She doesn’t know how he learned that word about her, which of her files he’s read, but it sounds okay when it comes out of his mouth.

_Friend_ , she thinks.

And then she throws up.

 

 

There’s words she understands, later: _pneumonia_ and _the flu_ and _very ill._

And other words:

_Reade stayed with you the entire time._ \- Zapata

_He held you when the doctors were trying to do tests and you couldn’t calm down.  He was so gentle._ \- Weller

_That Agent Reade is a nice fellow.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard. He wasn’t here when we got here, but all your coworkers say he stayed with you._ \- her dad

 

 

She worries about what to get Reade to say thank you.  Some of her books talk about giving gifts to friends, and that’s what Reade is now, he’s a friend, but there isn’t anything suggested for a friend who pins you down in an ambulance because you have to be safe in order to get help because you’re very sick, and that confuses her.  If there are gifts that are for friends then there need to be gifts for all friends for all occasions.

She checks the book again.  Still nothing.

She puts the book away.

 

 

Reade comes into the office to find a blue gift bag on his desk.  Confused, he reaches inside to find a jar of home-canned peaches and an obviously handmade card.

_Agent Reade - I have never given a coworker a gift before.  My mother calls these “sunshine in a jar.” Thank you for staying with me.  You used all the right words. I’m sorry that I vomited on your shoes._

The peaches are, indeed, sunshine in a jar.  And when Reade tells a stupid joke over an investigation three days later, the small smile that appears on Patterson’s lips is like sunshine, too.

 

* * *

 

**III.**

“Director Mayfair, I do not think taking Agent Patterson into the field is the best course of action.”

“I appreciate your opinion, Dr. Borden, but we’re at a critical junction in this case and Agent Patterson’s skills are required on-site in order to crack the computer system at our suspect’s company, since our analysts have noted it can’t be done remotely.”

She’s listening outside, sitting on a chair outside Mayfair’s office the way she sometimes sat outside the principal’s office when she got too loud or got overwhelmed and had to crawl under a desk to make all the noise stop.  But she’s not loud now; she can hear every word they’re saying.

“I promise, Dr. Borden, that I will personally escort Agent Patterson, and make sure she remains safe,” Weller says.

She likes Weller a lot more in that moment.  She already appreciates him, because he often goes to bat for her.  He is an _ally_.  Maybe a _friend_ someday.

She rubs her fingers along the hem of her sweater.

“She’s a fully trained agent, Dr. Borden,” Mayfair says. “She’s passed every necessary criteria to be a part of the FBI, including her firearms training.  I have no doubt that Agent Patterson can handle herself in the field.”

She isn’t sure about that.  It takes every single shred of her composure in order to fire her weapon.  She only got through it because she knew that without it she was never going to become an FBI agent, and it was what she wanted.  She made her spine a rod of steel and her nerves fire and barbed wire, and somehow she got through. But she doesn’t want to think about that right now, because the feeling that matches her face is _nervous._

She’s missed some of of the conversation now, stuck in her head, and she snaps back just in time to hear Mayfair say, a little more heatedly, “You can admit it, Robert - you don’t want her to leave the office because you’re afraid she’s not going to be able to manage being in a new situation without becoming overstimulated and having a meltdown.”

“Be rational, Director Mayfair.  She had an episode of overstimulation eight months ago that led to self-injurious behavior -”

“She was just hitting her legs,” Zapata breaks in. “She wanted to stop.   _I_ got her to stop.”

“- and she is so out of touch with her own body that she didn’t even notice she was seriously ill two months ago -”

“Who was going to notice?” Reade asks. “You don’t make it easy for her to make friends here, Borden, constantly checking in on her and trying to insert yourself in her day - you don’t do that to any other agent here, and I think we all know why.  You apparently want to be the one she sees the most, so why didn’t _you_ notice she was sick?”

“You’re just asking for trouble,” Borden says.

Mayfair’s heels click across the tile floor.  Outside the office, she bows her head.

“As I said, I appreciate your opinion,” Mayfair says, her voice low and firm. “However, I’ve made my decision.  Thank you for your time.”

 

 

The bulletproof vest is heavy and tight, and she’s surprised how much she likes it.  She makes a mental note to see if she can get something like it for home. She doesn’t like the Velcro straps as much, though - they aren’t staying even.  She pulls them apart, then fixes them back together, _apart together apart together,_ until a gentle hand comes down on hers and she looks up to see Weller.

“Sorry,” she murmurs.

“It’s all right,” Weller says. “We’re here.”

“Here” is Runyon Services, a giant tech conglomerate whose main purpose she can only guess at, as a quick glance at their website told her they provide services in more than twenty different categories to companies all over the world.  She knows they have machines and systems in this one building that are bigger and better than anything the FBI has ever let her play with, and she feels a little frisson of energy run down her spine. _Excited_ , her feelings prompt her.

They’re shown into the server room by a bald man in a blue suit who talks about something to Weller; she can’t process both what he’s saying and quantify all of the machines that instantly appear in front of her.  Her fingers flick outward as her eyes range over the monitors and the banks of humming, whirring equipment. Streams of code run through her head and her stomach twists a little - _worried_ comes that little voice in the back of her head.  She knows she has a lot to prove on this mission, to Mayfair and to Weller and to Borden and maybe to herself.

“Patterson?” Weller asks softly.

She jerks out of the code spiraling in her head and snaps into the blue-green haze of the server room.  Weller’s hand is on her shoulder. “Sorry,” she says for the second time that day.

“Don’t apologize,” Weller says. “Do you need anything?”

She shakes her head.

“Okay.”

Someone finds her a chair, and she sits down in front of the keyboard at the main terminal.  She takes a deep breath and brings her hands up to the keys. She leans in towards the monitor and just… lets… go.  Her fingers start to fly and the room falls away from her.

It’s a time-consuming process, working her way through the Runyon Services’ security.  Their suspect, whose name she’s absolutely forgotten, really didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to find his information.  That doesn’t worry her, she knows she can get through it eventually. But it’s going to take time, and with every breath the room around her is coming back into clarity, and it’s getting smaller.

A headache builds at the base of her skull and she grunts, trying to fight it.  She can’t disappoint them, she _has_ to get through this, but -

Lights flash on and off and an alarm rings through the small room.  She cries out and shoves her hands over her ears. Her body jerks in on itself and she gasps as pain flares across her chest.

“Patterson!” Weller is yelling at her, not because he’s angry but because the alarm is too loud to hear a normal talking voice. “Patterson, it’s just the fire alarm!”

_Just the_ and _fire alarm_ don’t belong in the same sentence, and she would tell him that, but the sharp piercing alarm is jabbing down into her ears with the tenacity of an ice-pick.  She tries to get her knees to her chest but her bulletproof vest is in the way. _“NO!”_ she screams.

Weller’s in front of her now, pulling something out of his bag.  He reaches for her and her chest aches, thinking he’s going to grab her, but instead his hands make their way to her head, slipping something over her ears.

_Noise-canceling_ , she thinks as the server room drops into - mostly - blessed quiet.  Her head throbs and her chest is still tight, but she can process thoughts.

And simple requests, as it turns out, because Weller says, “Stand up.  We have to go” and her muscle memory understands those, her body following through automatically.

They’re outside in the cold air of the parking lot in only a few minutes and back in the FBI’s SUV shortly thereafter and it’s quiet and her chest doesn’t hurt so much and Weller’s hand is in hers and she doesn’t mind, except only a little.  The world is still somewhat blurry and she’s breathing too fast because she knows this is going to count as failure, and she’s never going to be able to do something like this again and -

“Maybe, just maybe, we don’t mention this one to Borden,” Weller says as she reaches up to take off the noise-canceling headphones.

“That’s okay?”

Weller shrugs. “Did you do what you went in there to do?”

“I cracked the security but I didn’t have time to get the information onto a flash drive and -”

“Can you get the rest of the information from your lab?”

She nods solemnly.

“Then I’d say this mission was a success.”

She knows that’s not true, but Weller is her boss for today, and if he says it, then it must be somehow true.

“Do you want to do something like that again?  Go in the field, I mean?”

“Not today,” she answers, and she’s not sure why he laughs.

“But maybe someday?”

_Someday_ is a nebulous concept with no fixed points.  She could say “yes” and it would never have to happen if the opportunity didn’t come up again.  So she says, “Yes.”

“Then we’ll make you a field kit.”

She isn’t quite sure what he means by that, and he doesn’t mention it for two weeks, so she’s pretty sure he’s forgotten.  But one day she comes into the lab and finds a small black canvas duffel on her desk, like one she’s seen some of the techs take into the field, and a card on top of it.

_Think of this as a pathway to future successes.  We really appreciate all you’re doing for us here._

It’s signed _Reade, Zapata, Weller, and Mayfair_.

Inside the bag - headphones like the ones Weller gave her at Runyon Services, a canister of therapy putty, and a package that, when she opens it, turns out to contain a pressure vest.  The vest feels like an immediate embrace and all the anxiety she’s had that morning, and every morning since coming back from her first field mission, drains out of her body, and she realizes something.

They gave her a hug.

They are _friends._

 

* * *

 

**IV.**

Patterson confuses Jane.

Patterson is smarter than everyone on the team, Jane is pretty sure, and Jane can’t understand why someone like that is locked away in the lab doing things with computers and science.

Patterson does things differently from everyone else on the team, too.  Her fingers are constantly moving, even when she’s not typing, and her hands only seem to calm down when she’s holding something in them.  Her eyes don’t quite meet Jane’s when they talk, but rather fix on some point just above Jane’s left shoulder.

Sometimes Patterson keeps a song on repeat for days in her lab, to the point that Jane knows it forwards and backwards.  If it wasn’t so comforting, to have a song memorized in a brain that’s full of holes where memories should be, Jane might really hate it.  But she likes to think that Patterson’s trying to give her things to hold onto in a swiftly-tilting world that lacks substance and history.

Other things that Patterson gives her: her first cupcake (chocolate-caramel), her first restaurant experience (a quiet place called Morty’s where Jane had lobster macaroni and cheese), her first trip to a zoo (Patterson stood in front of the otters for a really long time), her first walk in the rain and her first walk in the snow.

She tries to talk to Weller about Patterson, because honestly, Patterson is so confusing and yet so beautiful and wonderful at the same time that Jane can’t quite process how she feels about the scientist.  But Weller seems to delight in being mysterious and gruff at the same time, which Jane _also_ doesn’t understand.

She asks Mayfair about Patterson, but gets the kind of “we’re all a team here, Ms. Doe” answer that Jane’s learning most bureaucrats delight in giving.

She goes to Zapata next, thinking that someone who seems closer to Patterson than anyone else on the team Mayfair likes to bring up would have the kind of answers she’s looking for.  But Zapata grumbles something like _if you hurt her I’ll kill you_ and leaves SIOC for that day’s mission.

That leaves Jane with Reade, who she finds drinking coffee at his desk while he goes over reports from their last mission.  He sets down his cup while Jane explains Patterson’s perplexing but completely amazing mannerisms, and as she talks a smile grows on his face.

“You… you get her, don’t you?”

Jane shrugs. “I wish I did.”

“No, you get her,” Reade says. “And she trusts you.”

“I don’t know why.”

He leans back in his chair. “It’s because you don’t have any preconceived notions about how someone like her should act and look and talk and think.”

_Someone like her._  That confuses Jane.

“You just like her for who she is,” Reade goes on. “Just like everyone else.”

“But she’s _not_ like everyone else _,”_ Jane says, frustrated.

“She’s not like everyone else because you care about her,” Reade says. “But… you’re right, there are things about Patterson that are different from most of us.  And you should ask _her_ about it.”

 

 

Jane brings Patterson a cupcake - vanilla with vanilla frosting and sprinkles, one she knows Patterson likes - and sits on a stool in the lab, watching the FBI’s scientist as she flits between monitors and computers and keyboards and machines.  Patterson doesn’t even seem to acknowledge Jane, her eyes always busy, her fingers dancing over keys one minute and flicking through the air the next. Pictures of Jane’s tattoos fly over the screens; Patterson approaches them, turning them one way then the other, looking for the hidden meanings in the images.  There’s a song on, the same one that’s been playing for the last two days, but none of Patterson’s assistants seem bothered by it, and to Jane it’s now as familiar as breathing.

At last Patterson looks up, seeming surprised to see Jane. “What are you doing here?”

“I brought you a cupcake.”

“Oh.” Patterson tilts her head. “Why?”

Jane shrugs. “Because you like cupcakes.”

Patterson blinks. “That is… true.”

She takes a few steps towards Jane. “Thank you for the cupcake.  I don’t have anything to give you.”

“You don’t have to,” Jane says.

Patterson frowns.  The song playing starts over again.

“Patterson, do you ever want to… do something?”

“What kind of something?”

“I don’t know.”

Patterson looks up at her, and for the first time since Jane’s known her, makes eye contact. “Would the something be with you?”

“Yeah.”

Patterson smiles. “Okay.”

 

 

Mayfair tells Jane about a newly-opened bookstore that specializes in comics, fantasy novels, and other things Patterson will probably enjoy.  Weller gives Jane the name of a restaurant Patterson likes. Zapata helps Jane find a new shirt - _“Not that all of your usual black ones aren’t nice, but you could stand to get something in an actual color” -_ and Reade buys Jane a bracelet to give Patterson.

“Is this a date?” Jane asks when Reade hands her the small box.

“Do you want it to be a date?”

Jane shrugs helplessly.

“Maybe just see where it goes,” Weller suggests.

“Does Patterson even know what a date is?” Zapata murmurs softly from behind them.

 

 

She does know what a date is.  There’s a book about it. Well, not specifically a book, but a chapter in a book about social interactions.  She’s been feverishly studying that chapter like she’s going to be tested on the information it contains. _Worried,_ the book of faces informs her.

She doesn’t feel quite _nervous_ or _anxious_ , because she definitely knows what those two feel like.  She asks Mayfair what that kind of feeling could also be called, and Mayfair comes up with _apprehensive_ , which she likes a great deal.   _Apprehensive_ , she tells herself as her doorbell rings.

It doesn’t feel wrong the way _nervous_ does, even though sometimes being nervous is good, like when she was going to defend her thesis.  She was nervous then, but everything turned out just fine. And it doesn’t inspire panic to flood through her veins the way _anxious_ is known to do; even thinking _anxious_ causes her to remember the fire alarm at Runyon Services or the overwhelming calamity of the serial killer case, the first time she broke down at work.

_Apprehensive_ feels like tentative flutters in her stomach.  And butterflies are beautiful.

She twists her fingers in the hem of her sweater, takes a deep breath, and opens the door.

 

 

Patterson at the bookstore is a Patterson Jane’s never seen before.  She’s animated, her eyes sparkling, hands flicking through the air as she practically dances between book displays, chattering away at Jane with phrases like _extraordinary world-building_ and _continuation of a trilogy but not technically a fourth book in the series more like a rewrite of actual canon_ and _some call it derivative but if you take into account the relationship between the knights’ order and the cabal of wizards then it’s -_

“Hey, lady, can you calm her down?”

A voice breaks through Patterson’s chatter and Jane whips her head around to see a man in a flannel shirt and jeans standing a few feet away from her.  Immediately Patterson freezes, hands going to the hem of her sweater, fingers twisting in like augers.

“I’m sorry?” Jane says.

“She’s too loud,” the man says.

Jane looks around.  No one else in the bookstore - and it’s a Friday night, so the relatively-small space is crowded with people of all kinds - has even seemed to notice Patterson.  Jane’s not even sure how to respond to the man’s statement.

“Look, I get it,” the man goes on. “It’s probably super-rewarding to take people like her out into the community or whatever, but she’s just a little too freakazoid for this kind of place.  Maybe Chuck-E-Cheese would be a little more her pace?”

A second man, just behind the first, lets out a snort.

Jane steals a glance at Patterson, who’s rocking back and forth in place, her head down, fingers locked into the bottom of her sweater so tightly Jane’s afraid she’ll rip it. “I think we’re just fine,” Jane says, looking back at the men.

The first man takes a few steps towards them and gets directly in front of Patterson. “Knock all that spazzy shit out.  You look like a fucking retard.”

Patterson’s mumbling something under her breath.  Jane takes one of Patterson’s hands in hers and gently tugs Patterson away from the bookshelves, away from the men, out into the cool fall air.  Jane hears a hiccup and realizes Patterson’s sobbing, tears streaming down her face.

“Shh,” Jane says helplessly, and she leads a tear-blind Patterson down the block to a small park and sits them both on the bench. “Patterson, I’m so sorry.”

Patterson hunches in on herself and yanks her hand away from Jane, fingers curling into fists that punch into her knees, over and over.

Jane isn’t sure what to do.  She’s never seen Patterson do this, never seen Patterson anything except competent and self-assured.  She wants to dig into her pocket for her phone, call Weller or Mayfair or someone who can help her figure all this out.  But she knows she needs to be better than that - Patterson wanted to be out with _her_ , not with all of their coworkers.

She leans forward and takes one of Patterson’s hands in hers, gently, tentatively, and starts singing softly, voice finding the song that’s been playing in Patterson’s lab for the last four days: _“Say we’re going no no no no no no nowhere / but what they don’t know know know is we don’t care.”_

Patterson takes a deep shuddery breath.

_“We’re gonna keepin’ on, keepin’ on going ‘til we can’t go no more / we’re gonna ri-ri-ri-rise ‘til we fall.”_

Jane keeps singing, her voice thin in the evening air.  She isn’t sure how much time passes, but as the words trail up into the fading sunlight, she feels Patterson’s fingers tighten around hers, and a second voice joins hers: _“No they don’t speak our language / they say we’re too savage / no, no we don’t need them anymore.”_

When the song ends the noise of traffic around them seems unbearably loud, and Jane wishes there was something else she could say.

Patterson beats her to it. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” Jane asks, genuinely surprised.

“That I was… too much in the bookstore.”

“Too much for those guys, you mean.”

Patterson’s eyes flit over to Jane’s face.

“You weren’t too much for me,” Jane tells her. “I liked how excited you were.  You were…”

“I was happy,” Patterson says. “I _am_ happy.”

“Me too.  Why does it matter what those assholes said?”

“Lots of people are like that.”

“Not me.  Not everyone at work.  Not -”

_“Enough_ people are like that.  It’s okay, though. I’m used to it.”

There’s both sadness and quiet acceptance in her voice, and Jane doesn’t know which is more heartbreaking.

Patterson leans in and rests her head on Jane’s shoulder. “This is okay?”

“Definitely.”

Her fingers shift a little, squeezing Jane’s hands. “I’m not apprehensive anymore.”

“That’s good, right?”

“It’s very good.”

“Okay.”

 

* * *

 

_**Coda** _

She kept the books so someday she could prove she’d learned as much as she could, done better than what was expected for _someone like her._  But she doesn’t need them anymore.

She doesn’t really think so much about what she wears to work.  It turns out that’s a rhythm like anything else, and after years of being at the FBI her work clothes are starting to fit her like a second skin.  She’s finally comfortable in them.

Having a job isn’t confusing.  Doing her work isn’t confusing.  And for the first time, everything that comes along with the work isn’t confusing.  Her lab’s adapted around her and the little changes she needs flow through SIOC seamlessly.  It makes her smile when Mayfair sends out the weekly schedule of meetings, telling the office who’s going to be where to the best of her abilities (nothing classified, of course).  She likes the calendar the lab assistants made up for a rotation of cleaning, sterilizing, performing maintenance, and generally keeping everything tidy around her. She appreciates everyone who _doesn’t_ touch anything in the lab, keeping their voices well-modulated as they discuss cases.  She’s beginning to understand how the feelings look on different faces - Weller’s _amused_ is subtle; Tasha’s _sarcastic_ is the most evident out of the entire team; Reade is _serious_ but never _angry;_ Mayfair is _focused_ on everything she does; and Jane…

… and Jane.  Jane is sometimes _confused,_ but so is Patterson.  Sometimes Jane’s _aggressive,_ which frightens Patterson even after years of watching FBI agents storm buildings and interrogate suspects, but she suspects it’s because Jane’s stern, hard demeanor is such a change from the other side Patterson’s so used to - the one that is _silly_ and _gentle_ and _happy._

There are so many things outside the books that Patterson’s discovering, things like friends and kisses and laughing until she cries.  No more time for _lonely_ \- she has friends now.

Zapata gave her the stars.

Reade gave her comfort.

Weller gave her quiet.

Mayfair gave her a chance.

They all gave her a hug.

And Jane… Jane gave her a reason to sing.

And if that’s not something written about in her books, Patterson suspects it’s because there are a few things words just can’t describe, and that’s okay.

It’s better than okay.  It’s everything she’s wanted, and that makes her feel _loved._


End file.
